Drawings for Animation (13/11/2013)

* For the last couple of days I have been drawing my twenty characters, though it is obvious as seen below that I enjoyed myself so much that I decided to do more.

My characters come from the following franchises.

• Little Big Planet. 
• Angry Birds.
• Kirby.
• Pikmin.
• Pokemon.
• Pacman.
• Lego.
• Fallout.
• Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Mario.
• Bomberman.
• Mr Game and Watch.
• Megaman.
• Final Fantasy.
• Rayman.
• Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
• Pappa the Rapper.
• Jak and Daxter.
• Strongbad.
• Okami.
• Star Wars.
• Adventure Time.
• Ratchet and Clank.
• Persona.

See below...

Overall, the lecturer was right about what he said last week. From putting in the effort and doing more than twenty characters I found that my creativity went all over the place and that I got more out of the task.

* I then continued to model my face which you can see below.

Unfortunately, once I decided to do some work on my body I found that my previous images of my whole body were not suitable due to slanted angles. Therefore, without anyone to help take new photosI decided to improvise and find some images online as reference.
You can see my process below...

After tackling the legs, arm and torso I attempted to do the feet, but forgot to do one side of it correctly, so I will try and fix it next time.

Talking about the industry (11/11/2013)

* To start with our lecturer decided to talk to us about the industry. I made the following notes from this interesting and reassuring talk as our lecturer seems really dedicated and wants us to do well. As a result, I feel more at ease with my possibilities and understand the industry a bit better.

• Our work will be assessed on national levels. So we shouldn't compare ourselves to others in the room, instead we should concentrate on our work and put in as much hard work as possible. After all, we are graded for completing the tasks, not just for who is the best in the group.
• He would love to hear feedback from us about the course so we shouldn't be afraid to voice our opinions.
• He advised that we shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes! After all, how else are we meant to learn?

* He asked us all what we wanted to do in the future and listed a number of roles called out by us. I responded with Game Designer, Narrative, Animation and Acting.  I had also thought about Games' Tester/QA before I then remembered all that involves is tedious amounts of repeated actions, thus I wouldn't want to do this as I feel this would ruin my experience and opinion of gaming.

Knowing what we were interested in the lecturer then went on to give us advice on each one.

• Think how we can use our skills in order to attract the games' industry e.g. show your art and share your created music etc.
• In terms on how useful a character pro-filer is, it varies from game to game. Sometimes it is up to the artist to draw characters first and then give them personalities afterwards. Other times it is up to the narrative writers to create the concept for characters and their personalities before handing them over to the artists to design. Then of course it may depend on whether or not a games' company want to try out a new piece of tech or game play.
• Writers tend to be hired only if they have some sort of writing experience. Therefore, I may well want to publish a book or two in the future as I have always wanted to, so as to get the games' industries attention.
• Even the Lego games that I enjoy so much employed writers at a time when they were only telling their stories through mime. The writers would do this by coming up with story boards that would clearly explain the narrative without words whilst being funny. The reason he brought this up was because one of his previous students now works for 'Travelers Tales', the same company that makes the Lego games. He hopes to bring them in for a lecture one day. This would be great as I would love to work for them if I could and hearing how to from one of them would be exciting! I may even wish to try and email the company or even the student in order to ask what they look for in new employees. After all, I don't know till I ask.
• Actors tend to be hired later in the process of developing a game from outside sources. Though sometimes employees of the games' company may get given small NPC rolls. Thus, if I do ever get a job in the games' industry I could tell my boss that I am interested and hopefully get something that way.
• When coming up with game ideas write them down in game design documents so as to make sure the reader fully understands the idea and can easily find the areas that interest them most. Though it is best to do two fully detailed pages as you can make your idea more assertive, clearer and not so daunting for the reader to process. Visual evidence and a Hollywood pitch also helps in this case as these pull in your readers.
• When pitching ideas you could create a video consisting of both your own 3D models and animation alongside clips from existing things in order to create something completely new and interesting to watch, whilst also showing your audience what the game would be about.

* Later I carried on modelling my face as seen below. Making sure to use the 'Weld' and 'Bridge' tools in order to connect certain pieces together.

* We also learnt today that we may get a new tutor next term to further help us with our 3D modelling skills.

* We were then set two tasks. One was to draw twenty character designs of ourselves from various games in order to experiment with different styles and have fun with the possibilities of the sort of characters we could animate. After all, he wants us to be creative and inspired so as to put in as much effort as possible. The more we put in the more we will get out of our work.

* The second task is to complete the whole 3D model by the 25th of November. 

Using an online tutorial (4/11/2013)

Unsure of the 3D model for my face, I decided to find a tutorial video online in order to find another method of creating myself.

To start of with I worked on the chin as seen below.

My lecturer then reminded me that I needed to retake photos of my face as the ones I had were not in proportion. So I went outside and took some new ones before editing them on Photoshop.
I am glad I did this as the images look a lot better and I will be able to make a more accurate model of my face. Originally I  mistook my dis-proportioned face as a good thing since I plan to make my face stylised. However, by starting off with a face that looks correct, I am able to exgerrate it more effectively.

I then put the photos as textures onto the planes for refrence in 3dsmax before editing the pieces of the 3D face in order to fit around my own.

Harvard Referencing:

• Unknown (2009) 3DsMax Head Modeling Tutorial Plane Modeling [Online Video]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6AlOPzSro (Accessed: 4/11/2013).

Continuing to model myself (28/10/2013)

Today I continued to model my face which you can see below.

As you can see, I struggled with my nose and overall feel that the last face I worked on still looked completely wrong as it looked more like a mascarade mask or a me with hamster cheeks.

 
Therefore, I decided to look at some existing 3D faces in order to try and get a better understanding of how to model my own face.

I then tried to create the nose again as seen below.

Luckily I didn't do too much as a friend of mine showed me how they did their face more effectively.
I then decided to model my face by starting with the eye and modeling around it like a loop, or as the lecturer describes it, the spider web technique.

The friend also recommended that I do the nose separately, therefore making it more rounded and less restricted to the face.

The lecturer then looked over my work in order to help me model my face correctly.
He explained that I should really take new photos of my face as I mistakenly had them taken close up when he warned us not to. Instead I should have had the picture taken from far away and then zoomed in. Without this technique I got front face views that included large faces with big eyes and small ears, whereas the side views come out more correctly. Thus when I place both sides together for reference, the results are false proportions like the hamster cheeks I had before.
He also recommended that I find each curve of my face such as the nostrils and bumps of the nose in order to make my face less flat and more rounded.
The work he did on my face was great, therefore I should try and use his work as a template for my next attempt.

Overall, the lecturer was pleased with all our work as, although we are on different levels, we have all shown improvement over the past few weeks. 

 
Harvard Referencing:

• Athey (2009) 3d reference - face loops [Online Image]. Available at: http://athey.deviantart.com/art/3d-reference-face-loops-141698442 (Accessed: 28/10/2013).
• Coxworth, B (2011) New tech creates 3D faces from 2D images [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.gizmag.com/new-tech-creates-3d-faces-from-2d-images/17651/ (Accessed: 28/10/2013).

Modeling ourselves (21/10/2013)

For today's session we started to put the photographs of ourselves onto Photoshop and use them as reference in order to model ourselves.

After positioning my photos next to one another I used the ruler tool in order to get each position of the face correct as seen below. This is similar to the technique used for drawing faces in art e.g. using lines to determine the position of the eyes and mouth.
I was advised to separate all my photos and then organise them into different groups e.g. the head, body and hands. Thus, when I go to model certain areas of the face it will be easier to judge each side of myself, therefore making the model more detailed and accurate 

Creating a plane I added a texture of my faces to it in order to see the basis of my face. I was also advised to keep the grid up in order to act as another measurement tool, (similar to the ruler tool from Photoshop) and switch Realistic to Shaded in order to avoid having shadows pop up on my textures.

The lecturer then showed us examples of 3D faces and how they should be modeled in order to be well animated.
He then mentioned that 3D models are rounded around the sides of the face and the nose, but flat under the eyes. This may seem odd, but actually, by not making a face look completely round you avoid the head looking balloon like. Although, I may wish to use a similar technique in order to create my face in the style of a 'One Piece' character.

Before continuing, I used the technique shown last week in order to make the textures have a far greater definition.
Then, using 'Planes', we started to create our eyes with the above in mind.

The lecturer recommended that I use a 'spider web' technique in order to correctly model the eye e.g. model your planes after an expanding spider's web so as to get the correct curves.
From doing this technique, I can already see a noticeable improvement.  

I then started to try and create the roundness of the face around the eye as seen below, making sure to attach my two previously separate pieces.

I then continued to try and model the rest of the face as seen below.

At the end of the session, I used the 'Mirror' tool in order to see what I had done so far on both sides of the face.

Overall, I am still very excited to be working on a 3D model of myself, but I recognise that I still have a lot to work on. Therefore, I am glad I decided to go with a stylised look, as I feel if I was meant to be creating a realistic person then it wouldn't work.